Following on from our Indian wedding ceremony, our wedding reception was held from 7 p.m. at the same venue — MacRonnell’s Roof Garden, in Bandra.
A complete change of clothes is necessary for both the bride and groom, and their close family, after the wedding ceremony. For me, it was a chance to put on the traditional red sari that I was so looking forward to wearing. In India, red is the colour of marriage.
Back at the apartment in Bandra, I was once again dressed up and groomed, and covered in an excessive amount of makeup and bling. Fortunately, my misplaced mangal sutra (wedding necklace) was found in the apartment, so I wore it as well as the one that was borrowed for the ceremony.
Adding more bling.
Despite me having jewellery hanging off or attached to almost every body part, from head to toe, the Indian aunties thought I was still looking too plain. Their solution? To stick bindis in my hair. They were on a mission, and none of my protests could stop them.
Me, ready for the reception.
Me, before the reception.
At last I was ready for the reception. Running late as usual, we all rushed back to the venue.
My husband, ready for the reception.
My husband was waiting there, dressed up in a beautiful sherwani suit with long jacket. My husband’s youngest brother’s wife, who’s a fashion designer, had designed it. (She also designed my husband’s wedding outfit). It was all hand stitched, including the embroidery on the front and sleeves.
Newlyweds.
The photographer cornered us for some quick photos before we had to take up our positions on the stage.
In India, only close family and friends come to the wedding ceremony. However, guests from near and far come to the reception, no doubt for a free feed from the buffet! We kept the wedding reception as small as possible, but there were still almost 200 people there.
On the stage, with my husband's parents, and my mum and uncle.
The newlyweds are supposed to remain on the stage to greet each of the guests and receive their good wishes. If it’s a large wedding, this can take all night. After lining up and wishing the newlyweds well, the guests usually proceed to the buffet to start eating.
The bhangra band.
However, the arrival of the bhanga band (a surprise that my husband had arranged to liven up the night) interrupted the formalities.
Everyone started dancing.
The impact of the music on everyone was astonishing. One minute, the guests sitting sedately and talking amongst themselves. The next minute, they were up and breaking out in the most incredible dance moves I’d ever seen. It was just like in a Bollywood movie. Indians certainly aren’t shy when it comes to dancing. And they can all dance so well! I was so delighted and truly amazed.
My father-in-law joins in.
The band asked people to take it in turns dancing. Men, women, bride’s family, groom’s family. Even my father-in-law, who had apparently never danced before, was persuaded to join in.
Me, dancing.
I was also made to dance, and did the popular “change the light bulb” move. (My Indian dancing ability is very limited, although I like to try!).
My cousin on the dance floor.
The foreigners loved it, and spent a great deal of time on the dance floor. They were fully encouraged by the Indians, who were so happy to involve them in the dancing.
Guests at the buffet.
Sadly, the music had to end by 10.30 p.m. because the venue was outdoors. There are sound restrictions in Mumbai. Feasting at the buffet was still going strong though! Fortunately, the guests were pleased with the quality of the food (one of the most important factors in an Indian wedding reception).
Cutting the cake.
The night finished with the cutting of the cake. It was also my husband’s parent’s 50th wedding anniversary (they got married very young), so it was a double celebration.
Feeding each other cake.
As is tradition during celebrations, they fed each other pieces of cake. It was a really happy way to end the night. After it was all over, I sat down with my new in-laws to finally have dinner.
I enjoyed the reception immensely, and so did my family and friends. Some of them said it was the best wedding they’d ever been to. I was surprised to see my father-in-law, who is usually very reserved, being so animated though. He was talking and laughing with everyone, even my family — and he doesn’t speak English. It turns out that some of the guests from his apartment building got him drunk. It was even more amusing and sweet when he phoned my husband later in the night to wish him well, and ask him if there was anything he needed.
However, the thing that really warmed my heart most about the wedding was how well my family and my husband’s family bonded. I was so proud of my husband’s family and how welcoming they were. They really went out of their way to make sure my family were comfortable and enjoyed themselves. It can’t have been easy for my husband’s parents, who haven’t been around foreigners before and know very little about western customs. I was also proud of how open minded my family were, and how they accepted India and all it’s challenges.
Needless to say, both families commented on the friendliness of the other.
The success of the wedding was such a huge relief for my husband and I. We were concerned that there would be a divide between east and west, and disapproval from some people. We needn’t have worried. It actually ended up bringing everyone closer together.
My mother-in-law commented that it was such a good wedding, she should’ve invited more people. My father-in-law’s clients commented that the family business had now gone international.
My husband and I owe it all to the bhangra band, who made the night so much fun for everyone!
Related Posts:
- Attending My First Indian Wedding
- Our Indian Wedding Ceremony
- 10 Days Remaining Until Our Wedding
- 5 Days Remaining Until Our Wedding
- My Mehendi Party
- At Last I Have My Wedding Dress
- When Aussie Wedding Goes Bollywood
- Ganesh Visarjan and the Maha Street Party
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{ 43 comments… read them below or add one }
congrats…. you and your husband deserve all the happiness
I loved reading your wedding and reception stories. I’m going to India in December to get married (Lucknow) and I’m so excited! I enjoyed reading all about the ceremony. My worry has been as you mentioned-that I’ll have absolutely no clue what’s going on! Why in the world can’t they have rehearsals as we do here in the U.S.?
I’m so glad it went well and that you are happy in Mumbai. Your stories about the neighbors have cracked me up-hope they’ve stopped bothering you so much.
wow you look so beatiful! Your husband is so hansome. :0) many blessing thanks for sharing this story.
Jenn23 – I think if they had rehearsals, no one would want to go through the whole lengthy process again to get married!
How exciting about your wedding. Congratulations!! You’ll have to keep me updated. I’d love to hear how it goes.
That’s very true..ceremony is definately way too long for a rehearsal! I have good news..just got officially engaged three days ago. And our wedding date was chosen yesterday (earlier than we had thought!) for Nov. 17th! We are so excited!
I must compliment u Sharell,u r lukin absolutely lyk a perfect Indian bride-complete wid da mangtika & hair decoration!I can sense ur happiness from ur eyes!Dat pic wid ur hubby & u is superb!Wishing u a long,happy & blissful married life!God Bless!
Do lemme knw da exact date of ur wedding..
wow , today i have spend my 6 hrs only on reading you blogs about you in Calcutta , Mumbai , Australia ,,,,,,,,,,,,i find it like a story of little princess somewhere in fantasy world , she ask herself who she is , she dont know who the animals , birds or butterfly are neither she can talk with them but they are her friends , she smiles as a holy angle ….. yours story reminds me of that old story . You have gain something in your life much more precious than all world’s wealth.
By the way Happy Indian life
now i am thinking to write a little bit poems about whiteindianbrides
Hi vision, wow, 6 hours! You must of found it interesting. Haha, that little princess in a fantasy world sounds exactly like me. I’m a Pisces and we’re born dreamers. I sometimes even talk to plants. Seriously.
Thanks so much for your good wishes.
Hi Sharell!!!
I am soo thrilled to have found your blog. I can’t wait to read everything! So far I have read those which relate to me at the moment, the ceremony and reception. I am a Jewish American gal who fell in love with an Oriya guy over 2 years ago. He took me to India last year and March 9th 2010 is our big wedding day in Bhubaneswar. We leave for India in 19 days
My mom and 2 sisters will coming with us to India for their first time. I would love to keep in touch with you, as one day I am sure we will be living in India as well!
Rachel
Hi Rachel, that’s amazing our situations are so similar, and my gosh not long to go now until your wedding. I wonder if you will get to wear one of those crazy hats too!!
Please do keep in touch. Feel free to send me a message and/or add me on Facebook. 
Hey Sharell…you are one beautiful lady! I chanced upon your blog this AM (would you believe it, while googling for party games to liven up our weekly coffee get-togethers – don’t know how or why it led me here, but am I glad it did!) and only stopped reading to grab a bite for lunch! I echo “vision’s ” comment, in that I could be here for 6 hrs or longer! Reason being, you have a natural flair for writing and, of course, I relate to quite a few things you’ve written (incidentally, I’m a Pisces woman too – March 4, ’76). Got married in 2002 and moved to the US soon after, so actually learned how to keep home in the US. Moved back here in July 2008 and have been a rebel without a pause since; find everything so inexplicable and frustrating and complex here I could scream! But reading your blog has inspired me to be more forgiving of my homeland (you’re more rigid with the ones you love, I think); considering how you’ve dealt with everything new here with such equanimity and poise
! I don’t know your last name, but would you mind very much if I added you on FB or you can find me alternatively. Enough said – let me get back to reading more of your adventures!
Hi Promilaa, welcome to the blog and thanks so much for your sweet compliments!
Rebel without a pause… I love it! 
It’s reassuring to know that even Indians get so frustrated by their own country. If it’s any consolation, I’m not poised and equanimous all the time, but I’m getting better at it. It’s either give in to India and change, or go insane (cos India isn’t going to change in a hurry)! 
BTW, my sister-in-law’s name is Promila… and she’s also a Pisces!
Lovely pictures!
Lol…how DID you come up with this – “change the light bulb move” !!!
that’s hilarious and i know exactly the one you mean – we do that step everytime we dance!!!
Haha, “change the light bulb and pat the cat”!! That’s how we refer to it in Australia.
We have names for lots of other dance moves too (apart from Indian ones). There’s “wash the dishes” and “do the shopping”, and “drive the car”. Seriously!
Sharell , you one of those few firangs , who can look gud in tradition Indian Sari.
Surely , you are exhibiting great confidence wearing tht..
Thank you so much!
For sure, a sari isn’t good for every gori. I’d look better in one if I had more curves… that’s my main downfall!
Whoa! I just stumbled upon your website and had to say hi. I am a Scandinavian woman engaged to an Indian guy (Rajasthani / family settled in AP, so I’ve got the North and South all in one!). I ended up at your blog searching the Internet for tips for my parents’ first visit to India. We’re still living in my home country due to my studies, but if all goes well, we’ll soon be spending 6 months in India while I take courses at an Indian university as an exchange student. It’s also possible we might spend a much longer time in India in the future.
Got to say you look positively radiant and extremely elegant in your wedding photos – I’ve seen too many pictures of Western women looking amused or awkward in sarees that they can’t yet carry off with the seemingly inherent grace of Indian women, but you are definitely an exception
I look forward to getting to know your blog better – though me and my fiancé are not yet married, I can relate to plenty of the things you’ve written based on experience from my (regrettably brief) visit to India, 2,5 years of co-habiting and my fiancé’s parents staying with us for summer holidays. So far I’ve only ever met one woman in my home country in a similar situation and I am extemely excited to dive into your thoughts on all things Western/Indian.
Hello there, Sharell! My wife (Aanchal) found your blog yesterday and absolutely loved it. I must say I love it too. Congratulations on your excellent evenhanded treatment of complex subjects in a way that’s great to read too!
I’m a Norwegian myself, and married an Indian girl from New Delhi. A lot of your posts resonate with me, especially this one, though my experience was from the other side of the gender fence (lol).
Looks like you had an absolutely spectacular Indian wedding ceremony. I’ve attended two Indian (punjabi) marriages so far, not counting my own they seem to get more and more enjoyable as I get used to how things work. It’s just a reflection of how India works. Everything’s chaotic to an outsider but there IS actually a protocol and things turn out very well in the end, with everyone having a lot of fun in the process. A very excellent way of doing things, I must say.
).
I had a massive cultural shock too, when I got to India because I’m from a country where we are quite reserved when it comes to interpersonal interactions. India though, is the complete opposite. Everyone feels qualified to give you “free advice” (like in the movie 3 Idiots). It was shocking to me at first but I got used to it.
And of course, there is “the scrutiny”. “The scrutiny” is tense and terrible. It’s when the girl’s parents look over you and decide if you’re worth marrying their daughter to. They ask you stuff like “what do you do for a living” and discreetly enquire about your income, qualifications, past marital relationships etc.
Thankfully, I passed the test and was able to marry the best human being I’ve ever met in my short life so far (she happened to be a single female at the time
On the whole, I’ve pretty much fallen in love with Indian, it’s people and it’s culture. India is a place which inspires and shocks. Which puts your senses into overdrive. You don’t go to India to find yourself. You go there to lose yourself.
Incredible India! That’s a massive understatement. As someone has said about India
“For she is like a lover of multiple faces, her beauty unparallelled. A man who sees her is a man changed. Leave her if you must, only to endure a longing so terrible, a lust so powerful, an ache so painful, that it rips the heart apart”
beautiful words and kind of true too.
Bhangra is Punjabi… We bring the life to the party!!
You look stunning anddd sooo happy…
Belated congratulations..
Grace:
“..we bring life to the party”
Aye we do!
Bhangra is an awesome dance style, specially in it’s original, un-bollywoodized version (a la Karan Johar and company). To me, it’s like a celebration of life itself. Buoyant and Happy, with that certain “feel-good” factor.
Talking about dances, I think classical dance forms (like kathakali) are breathtakingly beautiful too when performed well (which can be incredibly hard to do, I’m told).
I had the pleasure of being able to watch Nandini Chakrobarty’s kathak performance here in Delhi recently and it was just completely mind-blowing. I have very little technical knowledge of classical dance forms but as a layperson, I found it incredibly, amazingly beautiful. Too bad we don’t get
many artists of her caliber here in Delhi. It’s also a crying shame that many of my peers have no appreciation of the myriad arts of India and indeed, of the world.
I’m one of the very few engineering students I know who are artistically inclined lol.
Phew, I’m glad you added the end bit on to that sentence!!
Balle balle!!…. I would love some bhangra action right now. (If I wasn’t so darn sick). It has to be the best dance style in India, hands down (errrr… I mean up!!)
@ Praveen
“I’m one of the very few engineering students I know who are artistically inclined lol.”
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Every enginner is an artist.
Its just that people like Sharell brand them “non-interesting” or “unpopular” among people specially girls…
Every engineer might be an artist but most engineering students I’ve met aren’t too interested in the performing arts (such as classical dance)
It’s just that I’m a creative type, so am attracted to those types. I spent 10 years with a bunch of accountants, who have similar minds to the typical engineer, so that was enough for me!!
Well engineers aren’t exactly unpopular with girls in India (or so I like to think
). But yeah, trying to have a conversation with some of the people at my college is about as much fun as watching puddles dry.
Not everyone’s like that, though. Some of my friends are riotously witty and are a lot of fun to hang with. I used to consider myself as belonging to the “exception to the boring techie geeks rule” crowd until I caught my girlfriend yawning midway through what I thought was a very funny monologue (which is unfair because she’s a mechanical engineering student too). *sigh*. At least I can claim that I’m “artistically inclined”. Lol
Well engineers aren’t exactly unpopular with girls in India (or so I like to think
)
Oh, no doubt engineers are quite popular… they are one of the sought after professions for marriage, aren’t they?
Another reader of my blog is also a creative type engineer — he’s into photography. So there are engineers out there who don’t fit the mold! I’m not even going to wonder what the monologue was about though!!
Umm it involved a ridiculously complicated Laplace Transformation and how wrong one of the not-so-smart girls in my class got it.
Yes, I’m older and wiser now. It wasn’t funny.
It is not just Sharell, but a general thing. For a non-engineer person, it is not easy to have a normal conversation with your average Engineer. They are too conventional and logical all the time that it gets difficult for them to be abstract and easy going. Management graduates and grammar Nazis have the same problems.
That would be because engineers in India are the best choices for husbands, but not lovers. Romance is abstract, irrational and random – three things that are as un-engineer as can be.
That’s a very stereotypical view of engineers, abdullah. Many fit the stereotype but not all do. Also, not all girls look for a romantic idealist. At least a few prefer someone who is not so abstract. It’s as hard for a pragmatic person to hang out with an abstract one as it is the other way round.
In any case, at least we can get preference with some of the engineer dudettes, who’re as rational, practical and logical
.
I do consider myself to be easy going, though not abstract.
Lmao at “Grammar Nazis”. My sister is one and she can be amazingly irritating at times.
Indeed, thats what stereotypes are. There are abstract and unconventional engineers, just as there are women snipers. But they’re the exception, not the norm.
Romance is not idealism, it is just shutting out the world occasionally and getting a ‘high’. Much like being on coke or heroin, except that it is more human and hence, healthier. I am not undermining logic and convention, I am saying that in informal social occasions, you have to let it go.
@ Abdullah K
“Indeed, thats what stereotypes are. There are abstract and unconventional engineers, just as there are women snipers.”
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Its your badluck that your sample space was filled with engineers of different kind(Conventional and Logical and practical)…. Mostly its not…..
Infact an Engineering college(atleast in india) is the Place , where all type of fun is going around 24×7 , 365 days. Never a dull day in College life and though after entering proffesional life , one can become ‘decent’ but whenever ‘Devils’ join each other , there is no escape for the “Logical” and “Conventional” World.
Infact a very large percentage of Engineering Students and Proffesionals are having some kind of inclination and active participation in one or more form of art, be it painting, music , dance or sports…
You have to meet some more engineers..definitely..!!
What a revealation! So you’re telling me you know what fun is…
Well colleges are always kind of “happening” places because you have all sorts of individuals there. The activities of the party animal types overshadow the activities of the quieter people, even if the latter are in an overwhelming majority.
@ Abdullah K
“What a revealation! So you’re telling me you know what fun is…”
———————————————————————————————
Till someone have patent against his name for FUN , i will keep telling you what fun is.
As we say, “For a bed bug, fun is living in dirty, smelly clothes”. I guess something like that works for your types as well.
@ Abdullah K
“As we say, “For a bed bug, fun is living in dirty, smelly clothes”. I guess something like that works for your types as well.”
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I am least bothered about what you or your types say to me,as your smart judgement wont change how smarter I am.
The only thing bothers me is what anyone do to me.Till then I let every crap coming from the vocal chords of Homo Sapians and let it pass over my head or through my ears.
But I have one bad news for you ,Your “guess” is always as bad or even worse than the dialogues of Salaman Khan about “heavenly gasses” , be it in “Hum dil de chuke Sanam” or ” latest “Dabangg”.because both stinks badly ..sorry try again..
Actually, Mohit, he’s quite right in a way. Everyone has a different idea of fun. It’s like relativity. Everyone is right in their way; there are no special “correct” reference frames.
For me, fun is hanging out with friends, reading a good book, taking a long drive in my car or watching a cultural event. For my workaholic sister, fun is being the first to find an ambiguous point in a corporate contract. Two very different people, two very different ideas of fun.
@ Mohit Gupta:
I wasn’t saying you’re not smart, I was simply saying that what might be fun for someone your type is not necessarily everyone’s else idea of fun. You might want to tuck in that confrontation attitude of yours, it isn’t going to do you any favours in your social life.
@ Abdullah K
“You might want to tuck in that confrontation attitude of yours, it isn’t going to do you any favours in your social life.”
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Ha ! confrontation and me ??? Actually the thing is that you say something very tricky and dont want to be responded.And if someone do , you call it confrontation.
Again , you are giving free advices which I certainly dont need
When I already got big favours in my social life with this “confronting” attitude and Inshaaalah will continue to do so.
Actually there is nothing like good or bad attitude.There are only attitudes ,its up to you to prove them right or wrong.
Responding to an argument is not confrontation, trying to be a little prick is. Yeah, I know it is easy to be a tough guy in the internet.
@ Abdullah K
“Yeah, I know it is easy to be a tough guy in the internet.”
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Yeah , but then you will find me tougher in real life for sure.